Greetings from your clever commie cunt in Chattanooga,
Tennessee, USA, in the Never Never Land where corporations are people, money is
speech, and the rights of the few to
excessive wealth, power, and property outweigh the rights of the many to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, author of the blog Notes from the Ninth Circle and group owner-administrator of Terran News on Faceook. Just call me Chuck. Or Protest Dad. Or Mac Mheic Con Raoi, king of Gno, king of
Delbhna Tir Dha Locha, king of Muintir Conraoi, king of Baile Mac Conraoi in
Conmaicne Mara and overlord of Baile Conraoi in Corco Mruad, Chief of the Name
of MacConroy, and primary heir of Tuireann Delbaeth mac Ogma, god of thunder
and 6th High King of the Tuatha De Danaan in Ireland.
I first connected with my Scottish past and ancestry after
avidly watching the miniseries Roots
in 1977 when I was 13. My favorite
character, and hero, of the miniseries was Chicken George. It is what first inspired me to search for my
own roots.
Up to that point in my life, I’d always been told by my
Anglophile mother that we were English, the Hamiltons that is, and Scotch-Irish
in the case of the rest of our families.
Since I knew that families name or are often named for the places they
come from, I sat down with our giant atlas and began scouring England for a
city, town, village, or hamlet for anything Hamilton. Disappointed but not too surprised, I happened
to glance up the page to Scotland, where the town of Hamilton was properly
marked.
I was really, really excited. Mom resisted the idea that the Hamiltons are
not English, but after several Saturday bus trips I later took to do research
at the public library, she caved in. I
learned a lot about the House of Hamilton, found out that my Uncle Dick had
traced the Stewarts, my dad’s mother’s family, back to the Royal Stuarts of
Scotland, and discovered that the Buchanans, Haddens, Olivers, Adams, Hornes, Hawkins,
and possibly Martins originated in Scotland.
And so, essentially, I thought of myself as Scottish-American, though
the distance in time between me and the mother country in both space and time
were quite lengthy.
One day in my sophomore year at uni, I went to see my
granddad at the nursing home and experience one of the more disconcerting
aspects of dementia. He thought I was my
dad. But that wasn’t as disconcerting as
what he told me next: that my great-grandfather Hamilton was not really my great-grandpa,
at least not by blood. That he, my
grandpa, was a bastard, and that his father’s surname was King. He told me that he had even worked for him at
the A&P grocery, but that his da had never acknowleged him. I later confirmed all this through my mother,
who called my aunt after I told her.
Margaret replied that Aunt Lorraine had learned as much from my
long-dead Great-grandma Hamilton and told her several months before, she just
hadn’t gotten around to letting the rest of us know.
Still kind of grooving on the whole Scottish identity thing,
I checked to see if there were any Scottish clans, houses, grains, septs, or
families named King. I was nearly
overjoyed to learn that King was one of the pseudonyms adopted by members of
Clan Gregor after they were outlawed for being, well, outlaws.
It was not until I returned from the Philippines in the
early 1990s is when I began to do actual geneaological work to try and trace
the lines back to at least the first illegal immigrant of that line. Unfortunately, by that time Uncle Dick had
died of cancer and no one knew where he kept those records, so either I will
have to do all that work over again or just go with what I have.
My great-grandma Hamilton was born Anna Roach, and after a
lucky find in an old, old family Bible learned that she was the daughter of
Silas Roach Jr. and Alda Rice, both of whose fathers served together during the
Civil War in the 10th Tennessee Infantry of the Confederate army, a unit
nicknamed the “Sons of Erin”. That they
had subsequently moved to Arkansas Territory together indicates a certain Irish
clannishness, making it like that when Anna’s parents moved their family to
Indiana, they sought out other Irish-Americans.
Not definite, but likely, even probably.
That being the case, my biological great-grandpa King was
also likely Irish-American, and if that is the case, the most probable home for
him and/or his ancestors was the southwest of the region of Connemara, also
known as the barony of Ballynahinch, the westermost part of Co. Galway in
Ireland. Why? Because in the 19th century the members of
Muintir Conraoi, the MacConroys of Ballymaconry, almost universally adopted King
as the anglicized form of their name after having used McEnry for a couple of
centuries.
For a thousand years, the dynasty that became the MacConroys
ruled the portion of the Delbhna people in the land known as Ti Dha Locha, or
Land of the Two Lakes, also known as Gno, G-N-O. They were one of eight branches, and the
largest, of a larger population known as the Delbhna, who once rule Central
Ireland. They were pushed from their
homes in Tir Dha Locha by the O’Flahertys in the 13th century after the latter
were kicked out of Magh Seola east of Loch Orbsen. The main branch went to Ballymaconry in the
southwest of the west of what is now Co. Galway, a region known anciently as
Connemara and since the 16th century as the barony of Ballynahinch, while the
smaller group of the famil went to Ballyconry on the shores of Corco Mruad at
the eastern end of Loch Lurgan (or Galway Bay).
The MacConroy was one of the four sea-kings of Connacht, the
others being The O’Malley of Tir Umhaille, The O’Dowd of Tir Fiachrach, and The
O’Flaherty of Iar Connacht. Besides
trading and smuggling in partnership with the MacTeige O’Briens of the Aran
Islands, many of the MacConroys sailed and fought and robbed and reived with
the Pirate Queen of Connacht, Grainne Ni Mhaille herself. Hell, being descended from them is just as
good as being descended from Clan Gregor.
Gaelic Ireland is often said to have died with the Flight of
the Earls from Ulster in 1607, but in fact, Gaelic Ireland lived on in Gno Mor
and Gno Beg (the divisions of Tir Dha Locha under the O’Flahertys) and
Connemara (which remained without division) by law until 1625, and after that
unofficially until the Cromwellian plantations of Connacht in the 1640s.
The MacConroys were so old school they never adopted
medieval coats of arms. Thus, they
probably never adopted the system of primogeniture, sticking with the classic
system of election from among the derbhine, or beyond that if there not a
sufficient candidate within that small grouping. So I could very well be The MacConroy after
all.
Okay, a lot of that was a massive bunny trail. But it is relevant. Once I had started to wrap my head around
that, I also started to learn that nearly all my Scottish ancestors, nearly all
my ancestors period, in fact, had come to America from Ireland. Sure, a few were directly from Scotland or
England, but the overwhelming majority came from Ireland before landing in the
Americas. Which makes me Irish-American
rather than Scottish-American.
Despite the fact that many in Never Never Land use it to
mean that their ancestors come from both Scotland and Ireland, the American
term Scotch-Irish has a racist origin.
It is one that only came into vogue in the North (of the USA) in the
1840s when the old timer Irish-Americans, largely descended from Irish
Protestants and Dissenters, wanted to separate themselves from the pathetic,
desparate, starving huddled masses yearning to break free who were coming over
from Famine Ireland. Much later in the
19th century, as Jim Crow began to rise in the American South, whites there
began to use the term Scotch-Irish as a euphemism for white.
In truth, the only Scots-Irish, the more proper form of the
term, are descendants of Scots in Ireland.
Like Ian Paisley and Arlene Foster.
Or Gerry Adams and Bobby Sands.
In Ireland, the racist ethnic term corresponding is Ulster Scots. Because those who call themselves such are
Scots-Irish. The only thing that can
validly carry the name Ulster Scots is the dialect of the Scots language spoken
there.
As for the origin of my King great-grandpa, true,
circumstanial evidence indicates that he was probably Irish-American, but he
could well have been Scottish-American.
Hell, he could even be descended from Lithuanian Jews originally named
Koenigsburg.
Not were I meant to go when I started writing this, but fuck
it, there it is.
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